Link customization

You have the ability to customize multiple parts of the Link UI from the Plaid developer Dashboard.

You can create multiple Link customizations in order to show different versions of Link to different users. For example, you can show an English-configured customization to users who have set their language to English, and a French-configured customization to users who have set their language to French.

To create a customization, access the Customize menu within the Plaid developer Dashboard. You can then create a new customization by clicking on the drop-down menu in the upper right and selecting create a config. Or, to create a customization based on an existing customization, open the settings pane, accessible via the gear icon in the upper-right corner of the Link customization page, and use the Duplicate button. From the settings pane, you can also modify the countries and languages the customization applies to, as well as change its name.

To use a customization, set the link_customization_name parameter to the customization name when calling /link/token/create.

Via the dashboard, you can configure the following settings:

You can configure the color scheme used by Link to match your company's brand colors or website color scheme via the Background Color setting.

You can change the text shown on some of the screens to customize the wording to your app. This setting can be configured via the Consent, Institution Select, Institution Search, Connected and Re-Connected settings.

You can select the language Link will appear in, as well as the countries it should support, on the settings pane, accessible via the gear icon in the upper-right corner. The list of countries selected will control which institutions are displayed in Link, as well as whether the OAuth pane will appear. The language setting will determine the default strings used in the Link UI. If you want to customize the translation, you can edit the strings, as described in the Text strings section above.

Language and country are also specified via /link/token/create, using the country_codes and language parameters. It is important that the /link/token/create parameters and customization settings match each other. If the language specified via language does not match the language selected for the customization, the customization will not be applied. If the country codes specified via country_codes do not match the country codes selected for the customization, the country codes selected for the customization may be overridden.

Supported languages: English, French, Spanish, and Dutch

Supported countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, France, and Netherlands

Plaid recommends a default list of financial institutions whose logos are shown on the bank selection screen. This list is personalized based on user data, such as location. This option is automatically enabled; the Automatic option is pre-selected in the Institution Select setting.

Alternatively, you can customize the list of institutions by choosing the Custom option, but this option may result in lower conversion.

The Account Select pane is a required pane where users indicate which accounts they want to share data for.

This pane can be configured to allow for single account selection, multi account selection, or all accounts preselected. Your use case may influence the setting you want to choose:

• If your Plaid use case is banking, consumer payments, or wealth, we recommend that you use the "Enabled for one account" or the "Enabled for multiple accounts" view behavior.
• If your Plaid use case is personal financial management or lending, you may prefer to use the "Enabled for all accounts" view behavior. When a user connects their account via a financial institution’s OAuth flow, the Account Select pane may be skipped if Plaid determines that the flow has already fulfilled the account selection step (e.g. if Link is customized to enable multiple accounts to be selected and the financial institution’s OAuth flow supports this step, Plaid’s Account Select pane will not be shown).

After a user selects their accounts and clicks Continue, the Connected pane will be shown. The selected accounts will be specified in the accounts property of the onSuccess() callback.

1const onSuccess = useCallback<PlaidLinkOnSuccess>(
2 (public_token: string, metadata: PlaidLinkOnSuccessMetadata) => {
3   // updated selected account ids
4   const account_ids = metadata.accounts.map(account => account.id);
5   // ...
6 },
7 [],
8);

Note that only the data for the selected accounts will be available for the accounts via the API. You can listen for NEW_ACCOUNTS_AVAILABLE webhooks to discover new accounts for the created Item and use update mode with Account Select enabled to request data to be shared for new accounts from your users.

The Account Select v1 pane, which was an optional pane, is currently being deprecated, and all implementations must be migrated to Account Select v2 by March 2022 or will be otherwise auto-migrated. If you currently use Account Select v1, see the Account Select v2 migration guide.

The Account Select setting allows you to better understand which user accounts to work with. Link gives you access to all of a user's supported accounts at a given financial institution, but sometimes you might not want to use them all with your application. For example, if your user is linking a bank account to Plaid to support ACH funds transfer to or from their bank account, you might want to let them select a specific account to use, rather than enabling all of their checking and savings accounts for funds transfer. Account Select is required when using ACH with a Plaid partner. When enabled, the Account Select pane will display once the user has successfully authenticated and is the final step of the Link flow.

Account Select can be configured to allow either one account or multiple accounts to be selected.

If Account Select is enabled, the Connected pane will be skipped and the onSuccess() callback will fire after the end-user selects their account(s). The selected accounts will be specified in the accounts property of the onSuccess() callback.

Note that Item data will still be available for all accounts via the API, even if the account was not selected via Account Select. The exception is for Items created via Auth's Automated Micro-deposits and Same Day Micro-deposits flows: the API will only provide account data for the selected account.

The Consent pane is what users see when first entering Plaid Link and where they consent to the end-user privacy policy. Plaid now offers the option to select whether Plaid branding or a combination of your branding and Plaid’s is featured. This latter option includes the ability to upload a brand color as well as a brand logo.

Headlines are standardized based on which products Link is initialized with.

This version of the Consent pane is only available to Link customization settings targeting the US and Canada.

To customize the Consent pane, go to your Link customization or create a new one (you may duplicate an existing customization by using the duplicate feature):

Within the configuration page, you can choose to activate the new Plaid-branded Consent pane or the co-branded Consent pane.

If you choose the co-branded experience, you will see a box that will guide you to choosing your logo, and if you wish, a brand color that will be used for the dots animation on the loading screen. You must upload a logo (1024 x 1024 png file) to use the co-branded experience. You can upload a logo or brand color directly within the Consent experience:

Or you can make the same changes within the Team Settings page:

You can also choose to enable Data Transparency Messaging (beta) in the Consent Pane where you can describe your use case for accessing the data types that you are requesting.

Once you are done configuring your new Consent pane, click Publish and your new changes will go into effect.

Several other settings exist to configure Link, outside of the customization pane.

Account filters allow you to select which account types and subtypes will be available in Link. For example, if you only want users to link a checking account, you can use Link to display only Items that contain checking accounts. This setting will apply to both the Account Select view and the Institution Select view.

Account filters can be configured via the account_filters parameter when creating a Link token. For details, see /link/token/create. If you are using a legacy public-key implementation instead, account filters can be configured during Link initialization using the accountSubtypes parameter. For details, see Maintaining a legacy public-key integration.

Account types and subtypes that are not compatible with the products used to initialize Link will be automatically omitted and do not require an account filter setting. For details on account type and subtype compatibility, see the Account type / product support matrix.

The returning user experience can be enabled to create a streamlined Link experience for users who have already connected a financial account with Plaid. To learn more, see Returning user experience.

The Institution Select shortcut can be enabled to create a streamlined Link experience for users when you already know which institutions the user wants to connect to before initializing Link.

You can pass routing_number into the institution_data request field in the /link/token/create endpoint.

If the end user chooses the matched institution, Plaid will send the MATCHED_SELECT_INSTITUTION event callback with metadata {match_reason: routing_number}.

Plaid provides some recommendations for best practices in terms of configuring Link, including configuring Link customizations. For more information, see Link best practices.